Ronald Blumer

Ronald Blumer has written/produced/or co-produced eighty documentary films, including three series with Bill Moyers, CREATIVITY, A WALK THROUGH THE TWENTIETH CENTURY and THE U.S. CONSTITUTION. For PBS, he has written & co produced the six-part series, LIBERTY! THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION a three-part miniseries on the life of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN and AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY, A CENTURY OF IMAGES and he co-wrote an episode of Ric Burns' NEW YORK. He has written a program on the 1929 stock market crash for THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, and in the PBS series DANCING and DISCOVERING WOMEN, the Turner Broadcasting series PORTRAIT OF AMERICA, a one hour dramatic film, AN EMPIRE OF REASON, on the ratification of the Constitution. His script for the National Film Board's PAPERLAND, THE BUREAUCRAT OBSERVED won the Canadian Film Academy's award for best non-fiction script. He wrote treatments for a six hour dramatic series on the life of Prime Minister Mackenzie King for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and for PBS's four hour special on the life of Lyndon Johnson. He worked on the design and scripted interactive exhibits for the new National Constitution Center in Philadelphia as well as interactive exhibits for the Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World now touring the country and a video on the history of the First Amendment for the NEWSEUM which opened in Washington, D.C. in 2008. He wrote a NOVA episode on the re-encasement of the founding documents (a short version which is currently showing to all visitors to the National Archives in Washington). He wrote a film on the Mariinsky opera & ballet, THE SACRED STAGE which premiered at the Kennedy Center. In 2006 he wrote the two part PBS series THE NEW MEDICINE. The PBS two hour program on the life of Alexander Hamilton was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award in 2008 and DOLLEY MADISON in 201l. His work has received thirty major awards including four EMMY awards and a George Foster Peabody.

A U.S. citizen, born in Montreal, Canada he received a Bachelor of Science from McGill University, a Masters degree in Film Production from Boston University and was in the PH.D Communications program at McGill University where he was John Grierson's assistant. (Grierson coined the word "documentary" film.)

His articles have been anthologized in various books and publications including film program notes for the Museum of Modern Art. He has written a book on the film director Donald Brittain and co-authored the companion book to The New Medicine. He taught documentary film research and writing at New York University's Film School. In recent years he has been invited as a guest speaker at the History Departments of Yale University and Princeton University, the films schools of York University in Toronto, The New School in New York and The University of North Texas, Dallas/Fort Worth. He also gave presentations at The American Revolution Round Table, The New York Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and The New York Bar Association.